Karl Sapper

Karl Sapper, before 1898

Karl Theodor Sapper (also Carl Sapper ; born February 6, 1866 in Wittislingen ; † March 29, 1945 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen ) was a traveling collector, antiquarian, geographer, geologist, ethnologist and linguist in Mesoamerica around 1900.

Life

Karl Theodor Sapper's parents were Rosine Kutter and August Sapper, owners of a hammer forge. His brother was Richard August Sapper, who emigrated to Guatemala and became the owner of large coffee plantations there.

After attending grammar school in Ravensburg, Karl Sapper studied natural sciences and geology from 1884 to 1888. During his studies he became a member of the AGV Munich . In Munich he completed his studies with a dissertation on the geological conditions of the Juifen and its surroundings, with a special focus on the Lias deposits .

From 1889 to 1893 he stayed with his brother Richard in Guatemala, where he initially worked as a manager of his brother's coffee plantation. Together with Erwin Paul Dieseldorff (1868–1940) he undertook numerous archaeological excavations. In 1893 Sapper worked briefly as a geologist in Mexico, from 1894 to 1900 again in Guatemala and in other places in the Central American region. In 1900 he completed his habilitation with Friedrich Ratzel in Leipzig with a thesis on the geological significance of tropical vegetation forms in Central America and southern Mexico . In 1902 he was appointed to the University of Tübingen and was initially an associate professor and in 1907 a full professor of geography. In the following year he undertook a research trip to the Bismarck Archipelago on behalf of the Reich Colonial Office together with the ethnologist Georg Friederici . In 1910 he received a chair for geography and ethnology at the University of Strasbourg and in 1919 he finally accepted a call to the University of Würzburg .

During the years of his stay in Mesoamerica, Sapper did not only geology, but also volcanology and linguistics . Sapper's contribution to the science of Mesoamerican languages ​​includes his thesis on the origin of the Mesoamerican languages, which he located in 1912 in the border area between Chiapas and Guatemala. The cradle of the Proto-Maya was therefore probably in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes . There is a Sapper collection in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin .

Karl Sapper died in 1945 at the age of 79 and found his final resting place in the Garmisch cemetery in the northwest of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Honors

• 1917: Member of the scientific advisory board of the German Foreign Institute
• 1917: Member of the Leopoldina
• Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1926 correct, 1940 full member)
• since 1991: Faculty Award of the University of Würzburg
• Karl Sapper Prize (1996–2000)

Works

• Catalog of historical volcanic eruptions . Strasbourg 1917 ( digitized ).
• General economic and transport geography. Leipzig / Berlin: Teubner, 1930 ( digitized version ).

Remarks

1. ↑ where a Huipil from 1890 was found
   

   Fiesta de la Guelaguetza in Oaxaca, México, where the majority of women wear huipiles.

Not evaluated literature

• John M. Dienhart: The Mayan Languages- A Comparative Vocabulary Online at hum.sdu.dk ( Memento of April 8, 2001 in the Internet Archive ) . Odense University, 1997.
• Robert Wauchope: dto. University of Texas Press, Austin.
• Gudrun Schumacher: bequests, manuscripts and autographs in the possession of the IAI . Ibero-American Institute , Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation , Berlin November 2004 ( spk-berlin.de [PDF; 549 kB ]).
• Gregor Wolff: dto. Department 2, Section 1: bequests and special collections .
• K. Kris Hirst: Karl Sapper 1886-1945, Dictionary of Archeology (entry on Karl Sapper) . About archeology.
• Von Drygalski: [Nekrolog auf Karl Sapper] , in: Yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences 1944–48. 1948, pp. 208-210.
• Franz Termer : Karl Theodor Sapper, 1866–1945. Life and work of a German geographer and geologist. Barth, Leipzig 1966 (= portrayals of the life of German naturalists. Volume 12).

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Sapper in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Karl Sapper in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Overview of Karl Sapper's courses at the University of Leipzig (summer semester 1901 to summer semester 1902)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book. Membership directory of all old men. As of October 1, 1937. Hanover 1937, p. 177.
2. ^ Lyle Campbell : American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 4) . Oxford University Press, New York 1997, ISBN 0-19-509427-1 . Data sources ( Memento of the original from August 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. listed by author.  
3. ^ María Teresa Fernández de Miranda: Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 5: Linguistics . Norman A. McQuown, Inventory of Classificatory Materials pages 63-78 1968, ISBN 0-292-73665-7 , pp. 75 .
4. ↑ Julia Montoya Investigadora de mitos y creeciasancestrales transmitidos en los textiles in the Sunday supplement of the Prensa Libre of September 21, 2007 PDF ( Memento of October 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Karl Sapper
6. ↑ Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein:  Karl Sapper. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 435 f. ( Digitized version ).